黑人女权主义批评新方向

Indiana State University New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism Author(s): Deborah E. McDowell Source: Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter, 1980), pp. 153-159 Published by: St. Louis University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904407 . Accessed: 17/04/2013 22:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . St. Louis University and Indiana State University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Black American Literature Forum. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 222.18.12.66 on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:56:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NEW DIRECTIONS FOR BLACK FEMINIST CRITICISM DEBORAH E. MCDOWELL "What is commonly called literary history," writes Louise Bernikow, "is actually a record of choices. Which writers have survived their times and which have not depends upon who noticed them and chose to record their notice. " 1 Women writers have fallen vic- tim to arbitrary selection. Their writings have been "patronized, slighted, and misunderstood by a cultural establishment operating according to male norms out of male perceptions."2 Both literary history's "sins of omissions" and literary criticism's inaccurate and partisan judgments of women writers have come under attack since the early 1970s by feminist critics. To date, no one has formulated a precise or complete definition of feminist criticism, but since its inception, its theorists and practitioners have agreed that it is a "corrective, unmasking the omissions and distortions of the past -the errors of a literary critical tradition that arise from and reflect a culture created, perpetuated, and dominated by men." 4 These early theorists and practitioners of feminist literary criticism were largely white females who, wittingly or not, perpetrated against the Black woman writer the same exclusive practices they so vehemently decried in white male scholars. Seeing the experiences of white women, particularly white middle-class women, as normative, white female scholars proceeded blindly to exclude the work of Black women writers from literary anthologies and critical studies. Among the most flagrant examples of this chauvinism is Patricia Meyer Spacks's The Female Imagination. In a weak defense of her book's exclusive focus on women in the Anglo-American literary tradition, Spacks quotes Phyllis Chesler (a white female psychologist): "I have no theory to offer of Third World female psychology in America. . . . As a white woman, I'm reluctant and unable to construct theories about experiences I haven't had." 5 But, as Alice Walker observes, "Spacks never lived in 19th century Yorkshire, so why theorize about the Bront'es?" 6 Not only have Black women writers been "disenfran- chised" from critical works by white women scholars on the "female tradition," but they have also been frequently excised from those on the Afro-American literary tradition by Black scholars, most of whom are males. For example, Robert Stepto's From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative purports to be "a history ... of the historical consciousness of an Afro-American art form-namely, the Afro-American written narrative." 7 Yet, Black women writers are conspicuously absent from the table of contents. Though Stepto does have a token two-page discussion of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God in which he refers to it as a "seminal narrative in Afro-American letters,"8 he did not feel that the novel merited its own chapter or the thorough analysis accorded the other works he discusses. When Black women writers are neither ignored altogether nor given honorable mention, they are critically misunderstood and summarily dismissed. In The Negro Novel, for example, Robert Bone's reading of Jessie Fauset's novels is both partisan and superficial and might explain the reasons Fauset remains obscure. Bone argues that Fauset is the foremost member of the "Rear Guard" or writers "who lagged behind," clinging to established literary traditions. The "Rear Guard" drew their source material from the Negro middle class in their efforts "to orient Negro art toward white opinion," and "to apprise educated whites of the existence of respectable Negroes." Bone adds that Fauset's emphasis on the Black middle class results in novels that are "uniformly sophomoric, trivial and dull." 9 While David Littlejohn praises Black fiction since 1940, he denigrates the work of Fauset and Nella Larsen. He maintains that "the newer writers are obviously writing as men, for men," and are avoiding the "very close and steamy" writing that is the result of 153 This content downloaded from 222.18.12.66 on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:56:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "any subculture's taking itself too seriously, defining the world and its values exclusively in the terms of its own restrictive norms and concerns." 10 This "phallic criticism,"11 to use Mary Ellman's term, is based on masculine-centered values and definitions. It has dominated the criticism on Black women writers and has done much to guarantee that most would be, in Alice Walker's words, "casually pilloried and con- signed to a sneering oblivion. "12 Suffice it to say that the critical community has not favored Black woman writers. The recognition among Black female critics and writers that white women, white men, and Black men consider their experiences as normative, and Black women's experiences as deviant has given rise to Black feminist criticism. Much like white feminist criticism, the critical postulates of Black women's literature are only skeletally defined. Although there is no concrete definition of Black feminist criticism, a handful of Black female scholars have begun the necessary enterprise of resurrecting forgotten Black women writers and revising misin- formed critical opinions of them. Justifiably enraged by the critical establishment's neglect and mishandling of Black women writers, these critics are calling for "non- hostile and perceptive analyses of works written by persons outside the 'mainstream' of white/male cultural rule." 13 Despite the urgency and timeliness of the enterprise, however, no substantial body of Black feminist criticism-either in theory or practice-exists, a fact which might be explained partially by our limited access to and control of the media. 14 Another explanation for the paucity of Black feminist criticism, notes Barbara Smith in "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," is the lack of a "developed body of Black feminist political theory whose assumptions could be used in the study of Black women's art. " Despite the strained circumstances under which Black feminist critics labor, a few committed Black female scholars have broken necessary ground. For the remainder of this paper I would like to focus on selected writings of Black feminist critics, discussing their strengths and weaknesses and suggesting new direc- tions toward which the criticism might move and pitfalls that it might avoid. Unfortunately, Black feminist scholarship has been decidedly more practical than theoretical, and the theories developed thus far have often lacked sophistication and have been marred by slogans, rhetoric, and idealism. The articles that attempt to apply these theoretical tenets often lack precision and detail. These limitations are not without reason. As Dorin Schumacher observes, "the feminist critic has few philosophical shelters, pillars, or guideposts," and thus "feminist criticsm is fraught with intellectual and professional risks, offering more opportunity for creativity, yet greater possibility of errors." 15 The earliest theoretical statement on Black feminist criticism is Barbara Smith's "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism. " Though its importance as a ground-breaking piece of scholarship cannot be denied, it suffers from lack of precision and detail. In justifying the need for a Black feminist aesthetic, Smith argues that a "Black feminist approach to literature that embodies the realization that the politics of sex as well as the politics of race and class are crucially interlocking factors in the works of Black women writers is an absolute necessity." Until such an approach exists, she continues, "we will not ever know what these writers mean." 16 Smith points out that "thematically, stylistically, aesthetically, and conceptually, Black women writers manifest common approaches to the art of creating literature as a direct result of the specific political, social and economic experience they have been obliged to share" (p. 32). She offers, as an example, the incorporation of rootworking, herbal medicine, conjury and midwifery in the stories of Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. While these folk elements certainly do appear in the work of these writers, they also appear in the works of certain Black male writers, a fact that Smith omits. If Black women writers use these elements differently from Black male writers, such a distinction must be made before one can effectively articulate the basis of a Black feminist aesthetic. Smith maintains further that Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker use a "specifically black female language to express their own and their characters' thoughts" (p. 32), but she fails to describe or to provide examples of this unique language. Of course we have come recently to acknowledge that "many of our habits of language usage are sex-derived, sex-associated, and/or sex- distinctive," that "the ways in which men and women internalize and manipulate language" are undeniably sex-related. 17 But this realization in itself simply paves the way for further investigation that can begin by exploring some critical questions. For example, is there a monolithic Black female language? Do Black female high school drop outs, welfare mothers, college graduates and Ph.D.s share a common language? Are there regional variations on this common language? Further, some Black male critics have tried to describe the uniquely "Black linguistic elegance" 18 that characterizes Black poetry. Are there noticeable differences between the languages of Black females and Black males? These and other questions must be addressed with precision if current feminist terminol- ogy is to function beyond mere critical jargon. Smith turns from her discussion of the commonalities between Black women writers to describe the nature of her critical enterprise. "Black feminist criticism would by definition be highly innovative," she maintains. "Applied to a particular work [it] can overturn previous assumptions about [the work] and expose for the first time its actual dimensions" (p. 32). Smith then proceeds to demonstrate this critical postulate by interpreting Toni Morrison's Sula as a lesbian novel, an interpretation she believes is maintained in "the emotions expressed, in the definition of female 154 This content downloaded from 222.18.12.66 on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:56:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions character and in the way that the politics of heterosexuality are portrayed" (p. 39). Smith vacillates between arguing forthrightly for the validity of her interpretation and recanting or overqualifying it in a way that undercuts her own credibility. According to Smith, "if in a woman writer's work a sentence refuses to do what it is supposed to do, if there are strong images of women and if there is a refusal to be linear, the result is innately lesbian literature" (p. 33). She adds, "because of Morrison's consistently critical stance towards the heterosexual institutions of male/female relationships, marriage, and the family" (p. 33), Sula works as a lesbian novel. This definition of lesbianism is vague and imprecise; it subsumes far more Black women writers, particularly contemporary ones, than not into the canon of Lesbian writers. For ex- ample, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston all criticize major socializing institutions as do Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bam- bara. Further, if we apply Smith's definition of lesbian- ism, there are probably a few Black male writers who qualify as well. All of this is to say that Smith has simultaneously oversimplified and obscured the issue of lesbianism. Obviously aware of the delicacy of her position, she interjects that "the very meaning of lesbianism is being expanded in literature" (p. 39). Unfortunately, her qualification does not strengthen her argument. One of the major tasks ahead of Black feminist critics who write from a lesbian perspective, then, is to define lesbianism and lesbian literature precisely. Until they can offer a definition which is not vacuous, their attempts to distinguish Black lesbian writers from those who are not will be hindered.'9 Even as I call for firmer definitions of lesbianism and lesbian literature, I question whether or not a lesbian aesthetic is finally a reductive approach to the study of Black women's literature which possibly ignores other equally important aspects of the literature. For example, reading Sula solely from a lesbian perspective overlooks the novel's density and complexity, its skillful blend of folklore, omens, and dreams, its metaphorical and symbolic richness. Although I do not quarrel with Smith's appeal for fresher, more innovative approaches to Black women's literature, I suspect that "innova- tive" analysis is pressed to the service of an individual political persuasion. One's personal and political presuppositions enter into one's critical judgments. Nevertheless, we should heed Annette Kolodny's warning for feminist critics to be wary of reading literature as though it were polemic.... If when using literary materials to make what is essentially a political point, we find ourselves virtually rewriting a text, ignoring certain aspects of plot or characterization, or over-simplifying the action to fit our 'political' thesis, then we are neither practicing an honest criticism nor say- ing anything useful about the nature of art (or about the art of political persuasion, for that matter). 20 Alerting feminist critics to the dangers of political ideology yoked with aesthetic judgment is not synonymous with denying that feminist criticism is a valid and necessary cultural and political enterprise. Indeed, it is both possible and useful to translate ideological positions into aesthetic ones, but if the criticism is to be responsible, the two must be balanced. Because it is a cultural and political enterprise, feminist critics, in the main, believe that their criticism can affect social change. Smith certainly argues for socially relevant criticism in her conclusion that "Black feminist criticism would owe its existence to a Black feminist movement while at the same time contributing ideas that women in the movement could use" (p. 33). This is an exciting idea in itself, but we should ask: What ideas, specifically, would Black feminist criticism contribute to the movement? Further, even though the proposition of a fruitful relationship between political activism and the academy is an interesting (and necessary) one, I doubt its feasibility. I am not sure that either in theory or in practice Black feminist criticism will be able to alter significantly circumstances that have led to the oppression of Black women. Moreover, as Lillian Robinson pointedly remarks, there is no assurance that feminist aesthetics "will be productive of a vision of art or of social relations that is of the slightest use to the masses of women, or even one that acknowledges the existence and struggle of such women.' '21I agree with Robinson that "Ideological criticism must take place in the context of a political movement that can put it to work. The revolution is simply not going to be made by literary journals." 22 I should say that I am not arguing a defeatist position with respect to the social and political uses to which feminist criticism can be put. Just as it is both possible and useful to translate ideological positions into aesthetic ones, it must likewise be possible and useful to translate aesthetic positions into the machinery for social change. Despite the shortcomings of Smith's article, she raises critical issues on which Black feminist critics can build. There are many tasks ahead of these critics, not the least of which is to attempt to formulate some clear definitions of what Black feminist criticism is. I use the term in this paper simply to refer to Black female critics who analyze the works of Black female writers from a feminist or political perspective. But the term can also apply to any criticism written by a Black woman regardless of her subject or perspective a book written by a male from a feminist or political perspective, a book written by a Black woman or about Black women authors in general, or any writings by women. 23 In addition to defining the methodology, Black feminist critics need to determine the extent to which their criticism intersects with that of white feminist critics. Barbara Smith and others have rightfully challenged white women scholars to become more accountable to Black and Third World women writers, but will that require white women to use a different set of critical tools when studying Black woman writers? Are white women's theories predicated upon culturally- specific values and assumptions? Andrea Benton 155 This content downloaded from 222.18.12.66 on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:56:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Rushing has attempted to answer these questions in her series of articles on images of Black women in literature. She maintains, for example, that critical categories of women, based on analyses of white women characters, are Euro-American in derivation and hence inappropriate to a consideration of Black women characters. 24 Such distinctions are necessary and, if held uniformly, can materially alter the shape of Black feminist scholarship. Regardless of which theoretical framework Black feminist critics choose, they must have an informed handle on Black literature and Black culture in general. Such a grounding can give this scholarship more texture and completeness and perhaps prevent some of the problems that have had a vitiating effect on the criticism. This footing in Black history and culture serves as a basis for the study of the literature. Termed "contextual," by theoreticians, this approach is often frowned upon if not dismissed entirely by critics who insist exclusively upon textual and linguistic analysis. Its limitations notwithstanding, I firmly believe that the contextual approach to Black women's literature exposes the conditions under which literature is produced, published, and reviewed. This approach is not only useful but necessary to Black feminist critics. To those working with Black women writers prior to 1940, the contextual approach is especially useful. In researching Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, for example, it is useful to determine what the